Shots fired by Alt-Right man during Antifa/Proud Boys clash

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Oh, we've had that discussion here as well...

It was interesting to see the sort of people who were in favour of violence aimed at those with whom they disagree, and who wasn't...Plus the appologists who tried to write it off as a "joke"...

Edit: At the same time as the above discussion was taking place there was another which consisted of equating conservatives with Nazis - I believe it was removed, but had many of those in the above thread (as well as a few other membrs on the site with decidedly anti-conservative viewpoints) participating quite vocally in it...

Ya gotta toughen up.

So were the capitol rioters having fun too?

Damn, you are good at pointing out hypocrisy.
Please provide a link to your official fan club.

Having said that, as a moderate conservative independent, I am embarrassed by the proud boys, who simply damage political credibility for their selfish/childish emotional needs.
If I was a progressive, I would feel the same about antifa.

A pox on all extremists.

I remember those days.
A particularly disgusting period on WP.

But on the bright side, it gave some people plenty of examples of the emotionalistic nonsense other people embraced.

Not wanting to state the obvious but I think the moderators might have a different view of projected "history" on WP forums

Then don't complain when the people you're in favour of victimizing start responding to the violence you support with violence.

Your mindset helps people justify punching Nazis because if they can't count on the state to protect them from far-right violence they will feel entitled to use force to protect themselves from far-right violence.

The police seem to be pivotal in this regard. If there is a perceived bias among serving officers against Antifa/BLM then it may embolden alt-righters to scale up their activities like they did at Charlottesville and the Capitol riots where in both cases a large segment of officers did nothing but watch the proceedings despite members of their force getting beaten by rioters.
In Charlottesville the Proud boys/militia were seen beating left wing protestors and police stood by.

The police are sending their own covert message of neutrality to these groups...

It's a gift, of sorts, though my brother is the one who went to law school (I'm still better at arguing than him, not that he'd admit it). At this point, it's almost like spelling and grammar, I don't have to look for contradictions and hypocrisies, they just jump out at me when I read things, I actually wish I could stop noticing at times.




The things to know about the Proud Boys is that they're a literal joke, a fake gang that makes you stop masturbating and requires a "beat down" to join where they pummel you while you yell out the names of breakfast cereals, and that there are very few of them, it's usually the same handful that show up at every protest. I don't know when they became the go to lefty boogieman, but that's what they are, and it's a weird choice, a joke gang of "western chauvinists" whose own founder described them as a drinking club with a politics problem.

The other dirty secret is that both the Proud Boys and Antifa, or to use their correct name, black bloc, kind of need each other and are essentially mirror images, dumb amped up guys who want to fight and need the veneer of a cause as an excuse. Now, the black bloc have been around much longer and have a more developed tactical playbook where they bait the police and engage in lawfare, where as far as I can tell the Proud Boys just want to fight, and black bloc taking over areas and declaring ownership served as a sort of challenge to them, both groups would peter out if no one ever showed up to oppose them.

Exactly

Officials in Portland and Washington State enable them by treating them with kid gloves. They have basically ceded downtown streets on weekends to them. This is a dereliction of their basic job to protect the rights of liberty and the pursuit of happiness of business owners, their customers, or just anybody who wants to walk those streets.

I assume those who join antifa don't want the streets run by "brownshirts" (these days called MAGAs)

The last time brownshirts took over the streets of a developed nation it didn't end well for them.

The black bloc is much older than Trump and his people, they trashed Seattle during the 1999 WTO protests, and don't really have a fixed ideology beyond generic leftism, they just like to fight and break stuff. My high school friends were connected with them and actually lead some black bloc actions, the antifa moniker is more recent, and should be viewed as a marketing move more than anything.

True antifa isn't actually a unified front, more like disparate like minded individuals.

Yes and no, although there is no "true" antifa, it's all a loosely organized cohort that use similar insignia and tactics, they're basically the stormtroopers of the left, they're organized at the local or tactical level with encrypted apps and such, but there isn't a national organization calling the shots or any overarching goal, they just like to fight and break stuff for a "cause". They've long had a complicated relationship with mainstream left wing activists, who often view them as counterproductive goons who give the rest of them a bad image and disrupt their legitimate protests, but due to the unified front strategy they don't denounce them in public. Freddie deBoer just put up a long piece on them that's very worth reading if you're at all interested in their true role in American left wing politics:

https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/an ... less-child

Freddie is so far left he's practically a Bolshevik, but he's smart and honest, you should give him a read some time.